Please. You should see me when the car isn't on AutoPilot. I speed excessively, weave through LA traffic switching lanes frequently and generally exhibit unsafe driving behavior. I can't help it, it's like I get bored or something. I'm a decent driver and have never gotten in a crash but have gotten a lot of tickets. When I use AutoPilot, the car automatically maintains a reasonable distance at a fixed speed. You need to trust people driving other cars today, just as you always have -- that hasn't changed yet. AutoPilot related accidents are new, but accidents aren't. So yes people will die using AutoPilot but the solution is to know the systems limits and also maybe enhanced attention detection systems in the car, not banning AutoPilot or anything like that. I do believe AutoPilot can already reduce the number of crashes today.
The 3 Autopilot deaths so far involved 3 relatively young men, both in relatively elite professions: former Navy SEAL and an Apple engineer -- the third was a son of a Chinese business owner [0]. They fit the profile of men fairly confident about driving and tech, perhaps too confident. 3 fatalities over 320 million miles for Teslas equipped with Autopilot hardware is not much better than the 1.16/100 million miles fatality rate of all American drivers and vehicles.
I know, it definitely gives me pause to see people dying and is definitely a reminder to be safe. I remember when I was using AutoPilot on the 101 in the bay area this weekend, I noticed I was in the far left lane and decided to switch to a middle lane. So it's not that I don't think AutoPilot could kill me, as a matter of fact there have been several times when AutoPilot was definitely about to kill me but I took control in time to course correct. I think I've used the system enough to get a sense of what it can and can't do and feel that I'm less likely to get in a collision due to not paying attention while AutoPilot is on than I am to get into a collision because I was driving.
Also, in response to the statistics you cite: I wouldn't expect the statistics to be that far off the average because AutoPilot is limited in it's possible use cases at the moment. Even in cars equipped with AutoPilot people are always still driving the car for at least some part of the trip. Therefore I wouldn't expect the impact of AutoPilot to lead to a significant deviation from the average. Plus, I'd speculate that the crash rate per mile is probably higher on a Tesla then an average car -- I'm thinking of like a Honda Civic. Faster cars probably get in more crashes, right? Maybe not, who knows. Regardless it should be possible to control for this and assess the effect of AutoPilot on per mile crash rates by comparing rates for Teslas with and without AutoPilot. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that even Teslas without AutoPilot have automatic collision avoidance, but should shed some light on whether AutoPilot is making people crash more or less.
What about non-fatal accidents though? Where Teslas (and other assisted driving vehicles) prevent stuff like hitting pedestrians, random bikers, animals, parked cars etc.?
